Mercenaries could become 'privatised' peace force

A senior Labour MP has described as "breathtaking in the extreme" the Foreign Office suggestion that international peacekeeping duties in countries like Sierra Leone could in future be contracted out to mercenaries working for private military companies.

A long-awaited Foreign Office Green Paper setting out possible options for curbing the activities of mercenaries - long blamed for fuelling Third World conflicts - said they may actually have a role to play in securing peace.

But last night Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour member of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told PA News: "I find it breathtaking in the extreme that - albeit in a Green Paper and open to consultation - the Foreign Secretary should even contemplate giving such companies a veneer of respectability and suggesting that there could be circumstances when democratic countries or agencies like the UN should sub-contract peacekeeping or humanitarian intervention to such organisations.

"It would be deeply offensive, an abdication of the responsibilities of government and agencies with the high ideals of the UN, for this to happen.

"It would create the potential for wrongdoing by companies which could then dissolve themselves and lose themselves in remote parts of the world, unaccountable for their conduct or stewardship of war."

The Green Paper was prompted by the 1998 arms-to-Africa affair which led to claims that the Government had connived with the British private military company - Sandline International - in the illegal export of arms to Sierra Leone.

However it said organisations operating in Africa like Sandline and the now disbanded Executive Outcomes often had a better record when it came to respecting human rights than local government forces.

And it said "reputable" private firms may be able to do a better, more cost-effective job than forces like the United Nations peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) which was costing some 600 million dollars a year.

"It is at least possible that if the tasks of UNAMSIL were put out to tender, private companies would be able to do the job more cheaply and more effectively," the paper said.

The UN already used private military companies in peacekeeping operations in ancillary roles providing logistics support or security.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has also admitted he considered using private troops to separate fighters from Rwandan refugees, although he concluded at the time that the world may not be ready to "privatise peace".

"There may nevertheless be a case for examining this option," the Foreign Office paper said.

In his forward to the paper, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that a "strong and reputable private military sector" could have an important role to play in helping the UN respond to international crises.

"Today's world is a far cry from the 1960s when private military activity usually meant mercenaries of the rather unsavoury kind involved in post-colonial or neo-colonial conflicts," he said.

"One of the reasons for considering the option of a licensing regime is that it may be desirable to distinguish between reputable and disreputable private sector operators, to encourage and support the former while, as far as possible, eliminating the latter."

The paper makes no recommendations but sets out a series of options from an outright ban on military firms operating out of Britain, through to some form of government licensing system or self-regulation.